Thursday, November 24, 2016

Identitarian Activist Home Raided by German Police

German police have raided the home of a young activist of the ‘hipster-right’ Identitarian youth movement after claiming he was committing vandalism by putting up stickers around his town.

Police in the German region of Hessen raided the young activist’s home earlier this week according to a post on the Facebook of the German branch of the anti-mass migration youth movement.

The German Identitarians, who recently staged a protest at the Brandenburg Gate which made international headlines, claim that the young father had his home broken into by the police and used the opportunity to seize his mobile phone and Identitarian stickers and fliers. The man’s place of business was also raided.

The group say that the reason given for the raid was that he had been accused of vandalism as he had put up fliers and stickers around his hometown as well as using a chalk-based spray paint to spray Identitarian slogans.

According to the group, the charges are unreasonable as they claimed that the main charge of vandalism – related to the spray painting – should not be applied as the chalk-based paint washes away in the rain, unlike regular spray-paint. They also claimed that due to the increasingly cold weather even the stickers would be much easier to remove due to the glue hardening and becoming brittle.

Calling the charges “questionable at best”, the group wrote: “This search is not only a scandal because of the ridiculous charge of material damage, but also the obvious intimidation of a father of a young family who is fighting for his country and his homeland.”

The group also mention an earlier posting in which two members of the movement in Swabia had been violently attacked by left-wing extremists. They noted that police investigation into such assaults are “half-hearted”, but the police were over eager to raid the home of an activist who had only put up stickers around his town.

Earlier this year, the German domestic intelligence service, known as the Agency for Protection of the Constitution, confirmed that they were monitoring the hipster activists under pressure from left-wing parties in government. While the head of the spy agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, warned that the group could sway the opinions of young people so far the agency hasn’t had sufficient evidence to raid or ban the group.

Despite the incident being one of the first cases of police raiding the activist group or their members, German police have been raiding the homes of those critical of migrants and mass migration on social media over the past year. In April, police in the German capital of Berlin raided homes across the city for alleged “xenophobic hate posts” arresting several in the process.

In July, 60 different homes were raided for hate posts across the country in a large scale operation. During the raids, mobile phones and computers were also confiscated by the authorities.